Oh, do I have so many choice colorful words I would love to yell at in Vietnamese.
Fred was woke as fuck
the most radical thing about this in it’s context is that in the moment there is no discussion about this being a radical act. in the moment, on the show, Fred Rogers simply says “isn’t it nice to soak your feet after a long day” and then him and the mailman (i forget his name) just soak their feet and speak as equals about how their day is going and how nice it feels to be neighborly to each other.
the most radical acts of defiance don’t look like defiance at all. they look like a friend being a friend. ultimately, that’s all solidarity is. a willingness to make friends with people who are different from you
Folks see this or Uhura/Chekov on Star Trek and completely lack the contextual understanding behind just how woke (For the time) it is.
See parallels w/AIDS fears & Princess Di shaking hands? But contrasts of course
I was thinking of this moment
Man, I wish we lived in a world where being kind and treating everyone equally wasn’t somehow political.
May 1st, 1969. Fred Rodgers testifies before the Senate in favor of PBS Funding: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKy7ljRr0AA
Presbyterians don’t have canonized saints but if they did, The Reverend Fred Rogers would almost certainly be #1 on the list. He believed in the importance of teaching kids to love their neighbors and themselves. And he found an incredibly effective way to do it that basically no one else has been able to match.
Too bad Meghan McCain was apparently watching Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood on mute the entire time.
the bit that I always am happy to know is that through his entire show, he never appeared to be outwardly religious.
he said be kind, because it’s good to do, not because god said.
he said love one another, because it’s wonderful to be loved back, not because it was in some book.
that he was able to preach without the stigma of religion gave the enormous reach across cultures that his program had.
He really embodied all that is good in us.
Its always amazing how selective this is. Should business people also shutup about politics? Should they be prevented from lobbying and donating to political campaigns?
Guess which party’s supreme court picks fucked that up?
Business people should not be celebrities, so people should only listen as it pertains to their company or their industry.
Wealthy donors are clearly one of the causes of our current mess and need to be fixed
I wonder if McCain is dishonest, stupid, or both. I think both, but stupid is the dominant mechanism here. I think she’s too idiotic to grasp that all things have a political context and subtext, even when it’s not an explicit “vote for XYZ”. But maybe she gets that and is just being dishonest for clout.
Either way I hope she goes away and never impacts the world again.
That kind of was the point — he taught values without turning childhood into a debate. That’s why he still resonates.
What’s funny is that she’s right. He wasn’t political. He was just a normal decent person. He didn’t talk about Republicans (which I believe he himself was) or Democrats. So in that sense, yeah, he wasn’t political.
Really? But he was such a normal decent person? I assumed he was liberal or progressive or socialist because he valued empathy and niceness. He did not look down on people for their race, class, religion or abilities. He valued education. He genuinely cared for people.
The lesson I take from this is republicans used to not be sociopaths
I was just talking about the fact that he didn’t mention politics in that sense.
Politics in the US used to be divided along a lot more lines than just socially progressive vs socially conservative. You had a lot of people voting in ways that would surprise people these days, which was totally normal and reasonable, as the reaction to hearing people voted differently to you wasn’t outrage like it is now. It’s really hard to go back to that though, as now it’s been sorted down pretty much exclusively one very emotional axis being the whole identity of the parties, everyone infers a lot more about people based on who they vote for.
In the 80s and 90s it was possible to have faith in the country. That the current administration was just a bad actor and we’d get it right next time. That we all kinda wanted the same thing, a functioning government and to lead our lives happily and privately.
Maybe it was true then. Maybe Fox News actually did poison the well, and people who once were rational are no longer so. Fear and hate blight rationality and the media cycle feeds on it. The more angry we are, the more we engage with social media. The more ads we’re served.
It’s wild that we’ll have to explain around campfires and cook stoves in the aftermath to whatever generation follows us that this was all in pursuit of ad revenue.
My man Rodger’s was antifash you imbecile
People are genuinely brainwashed. Try to explain that left = for people and right = for profit and they will spout out whataboutisms or just reply with the laughing emoji.
As a rich girl, why would she watch Mr Rogers? Didn’t he testify before Congress about not cutting off PBS finding? That says enough about his politics.
Of course, Fred Rogers had political affiliations and views, but he did not communicate them through his show. In fact, he was careful to limit his political ideology, given his dedication to helping children develop.
I believe this quote from McCain reiterates that sentiment. The fact that this post is framing her statement as something disingenuous is very telling about how this community has changed. How are we any different from the politicians we criticize when we do the exact same thing to support our own narratives?
This is, frankly, kind of gross.
Yeah, Mr. Rogers never did anything political
/s
You are absolutely correct that was a political push he was trying to do. The key thing in terms of kids he never did anything like “you should vote for capitalism or Democrats or whatever when you grow up”
For the kids his show was solely about how to treat other people and themselves as they grow. My kids do still watch his show, at least when they want something relaxing to go to sleep with which is good enough for me.
This isn’t to say he was perfect but I would be so insanely happy if we lived in a world with most people living close to the level he did in caring for others.
Another viet guy in the thread?
This bitch is doing wonders for the perceptions of her gender… /S
Refrain from using infantalising and abelist language to criticise someone. McCaine’s a racist, call her a racist, she’s a zionist, call her a zionist. She’s a blood thirsty monster.
